Newsroom/World View

NEWSROOM for May 5, 2000

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ANNOUNCER: Seen in classrooms the world over, this is CNN NEWSROOM.

ANDY JORDAN, CO-HOST: And thanks for making NEWSROOM part of your Friday. I'm Andy Jordan.

SHELLEY WALCOTT, CO-HOST: And I'm Shelley Walcott.

We begin today with one of the consequences of our high-tech world.

JORDAN: In today's news, the e-mail that proclaims its love wreaks havoc for millions of computer users around the world.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a global virus of epidemic proportions.

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WALCOTT: Then, it's not all bad news for the Internet. In "Editor's Desk," we'll show you one of its many benefits.

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KEN FINCHER, AMERICAN RED CROSS: We're finding that more people are visiting us and we're being more visible throughout the community, and we're being able to educate people on what we do."

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JORDAN: In our "Worldview" segment, meet Uganda's literary Robin Hood.

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TANYA SCHWEDLER, STUDENT: It makes me feel good to know that I'm helping in the littlest way possible to make other people's lives a little bit better.

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WALCOTT: And our look at Hispanic heritage continues in "Chronicle"; this time the impact Latinos are having in the world of advertising.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's hip, it's hot, it's now.

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JORDAN: This is what millions of computer users around the world have been logging into. While love normally spreads affection, lately it's been spreading infection. Today's news focus is on a new computer bug which FBI agents say could become the most widespread virus attack ever.

A computer virus is a portion of a program code designed to copy itself into other such codes or computer files. The replicating virus often multiplies until it destroys data or renders other program codes meaningless. The "Love Bug" as it's called, arrives as an e-mail entitled "ILOVEYOU". Once opened, the virus can destroy files on the user's hard drive, as well as other files on networks to which the user is connected.

The Love Bug has already shut down e-mail systems at major companies. It has even penetrated computers at the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency and Britain's Parliament. The bug is being compared to the "Melissa" virus which affected 300,000 computers last year. But computer experts say the Love Bug is far more lethal. It spread twice as fast as Melissa in the first 10 hours after it was identified.

With more on the effects of the virus, here's Tom Mintier.

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TOM MINTIER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For information technology or IT managers around the world, it is the love they're learning to hate. Attached to an incoming e-mail message, once opened, the virus spawns and generates a chain of similar e-mails to the first 300 names listed in the user's address book.

CRISPIN MANNERS, CEO, KAIZO CORP.: Our IT guy got onto it pretty quickly and realized that it was a virus and put out an alert. And fortunately, at that point, we were able to stop other people opening it. Otherwise, I think we would have been in some real trouble.

MINTIER: The generated traffic eventually clogs corporate networks, which grind to a halt after being overloaded. The virus also attacks computer files, changing names of some and deleting others. Opening mail on this day quickly became a problem. When asked "would you like to read it now?" most people fell into the trap and clicked "yes."

In Britain, the world's largest wireless telecom firm, Vodafone Airtouch, simply shut down its internal e-mail server after being hit by the love bug. First noticed in Asia, the computer virus rapidly spread across the globe with the clock as businesses opened and employees began with their e-mail. The result was snarled communication from investment banks to parliaments.

The British House of Commons' computer system was gridlocked. System operators had to turn computers off and members of Parliament could neither send or receive e-mails. Computer experts say the best thing to do to battle the love bug is to simply delete suspect e-mails and delete it again from the deleted items file.

JAMES CLARKE, SYSTEMS SUPPORT MANAGER, TURNER BROADCASTING EUROPE: If you delete the message, it's going to go to deleted items and it will stay there, and you could inadvertently open it again at a later date when you are maybe less conscious of the fact that it's there. The best thing to do is delete it straight away from your inbox and then empty your deleted items folders as well.

MINTIER: What makes the "love" virus more serious than last year's Melissa virus is that this one sends copies of the message to the first 300 addresses in each address book and may use other distribution methods as well. Melissa only sent copies to the first 50 names.

This virus also is more destructive to files on your computer. It stays in the Windows registry and starts running again each and every time an infected computer is restarted, sending out that unwanted affection all over again.

Tom Mintier, CNN, London.

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WALCOTT: Also in today's news, we mark the passing of arguably the most influential Catholic in the United States. Cardinal John O'Connor was considered the pope's biggest ally in America. He died Wednesday night, eight months after surgery to remove a cancerous brain tumor. As the leader of around two million Catholics in the New York area, his influence was pervasive. In the Roman Catholic Church, cardinal is just below pope, followed by archbishop and bishop.

But as Deborah Feyerick tells us, cardinal was just one of many distinguished titles for John O'Connor.

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DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): John Cardinal O'Connor was born in Philadelphia on January 15, 1920. At the age of 16, he entered the seminary and was ordained a priest in 1945, the year World War II ended. O'Connor spent nearly three decades as a U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. chaplain, serving American troops during the Korean and Vietnam wars. He retired from military service as a rear admiral in 1979. He rose quickly through the church hierarchy from bishop of Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1983, to archbishop of New York in 1984, then cardinal a year later.

A man of strong convictions and deep faith, Cardinal O'Connor held tightly to the teachings of the Catholic Church, marching against abortion and criticizing Catholic politicians like Geraldine Ferraro, who supported it, no matter what office they were running for. Though he drew fire from abortion advocates and others who disagreed with his positions, he defended his convictions in a spirit of peace.

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CARDINAL JOHN O'CONNOR: That we do not pray today in protest, we pray in love and in hope.

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FEYERICK: He vigorously denounced violence at abortion clinics, even going online in 1995 to field questions about clinic bombings.

O'CONNOR: If anyone has an urge to kill anybody at an abortion clinic, kill me instead.

FEYERICK: Cardinal O'Connor became a bridge builder. When police opened fire on an unarmed West African immigrant this year, the cardinal held an interfaith service to ease race relations. And in a moving letter during the Jewish holidays, he expressed his abject sorrow for any harm done to Jews by Catholics.

When he turned 75, he submitted his resignation, as required by church law. The pope reportedly wrote back: "Keep doing what you're doing; we'll call you."

O'Connor had a growth surgically removed form his nose. Then in August, suffering from persistent nausea, he was admitted to Memorial Sloan Kettering in Manhattan where he was diagnosed with brain cancer.

Reflecting on his life from his hospital bed, the cardinal wrote: "I find myself in unutterable peace, a peace borne of the grace of God and the goodness of God's people."

John Cardinal O'Connor, New Yorker, Catholic leader and teacher, humanitarian.

Deborah Feyerick, CNN, New York.

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JORDAN: Well, you may think of the Web as a commercial venture, but there's another side as well. Nonprofit organizations are finding that the Internet weaves important links between people in need and people ready to give. TBS, a division of our parent company, Time Warner, sponsors a community Web site here in Atlanta. It's called Atlanta Cares. The idea: to encourage hands-on involvement. But hands-on goes way beyond the keyboard and all around the world.

Kathy Nellis has more in today's "Editor's Desk."

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KATHY NELLIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Internet has 400 million Web sites, and it's still multiplying. As dot.com steals the spotlight, the dot.orgs quietly go about their business. Take the Red Cross, a local, national and global organization: A Web site gives people around the world instant access to information about services.

FINCHER: We're finding that more people are visiting us and we're being more visible throughout the community, and we're being able to educate people on what we do.

NELLIS: This humanitarian agency feeds and houses people following disasters, collects blood for medical needs, and offers community programs on everything from baby-sitting to CPR. When you think about it, the Web site is actually a kind of constant commercial.

FINCHER: About two years ago, we had over $170,000 donated nationally through the Internet. This year already, we've had over $2 million donated. So we've seen the impact. We know that people are visiting our site.

NELLIS: Donations are crucial to nonprofits. And thanks to the Internet, the Red Cross says the message is getting out in a faster, more efficient, more cost-effective way than ever before.

FINCHER: Every donor wants to make certain that their donations go to the clients, those people that need them. The Internet is the least expensive form of fundraising that we've found so far, and by far. We're able to stretch donor dollars so much greater than we were before.

NELLIS: And the Red Cross is just one nonprofit learning that lesson.

(on camera): Around the world, someone dies of hunger every 3.6 seconds. That's 24,000 people a day. And three-fourths of those are children under age 5.

(voice-over): Those are some of the statistics you can find on the hunger site. That's www.thehungersite.com. It's loaded with facts and figures, but the Web site does more than put a face on hunger. Click this button to donate food. The site sponsors pay for your donation, which you can make once every day. Your visit provides two cups of rice, wheat, maize or other staple food to a hungry person by way of the United Nations World Food Program.

Maybe you'd like to donate your time or money a little closer to home. Well, Web sites offer a wide variety of local opportunities. For example, in Atlanta, just log on to AtlantaCares.com. You'll find more than 550 members -- nonprofit organizations and schools looking for a helping hand.

LOREN HEYNS, WEB DEVELOPER, ATLANTA CARES: Atlanta Cares is a community calendar system for volunteers. The point of Atlanta Cares is to make volunteering as easy and as quick for people to find as they can. So it becomes part of their daily routine. People can go out during lunchtime, teach kids how to read. People can go to a senior home after work and stop by even for a half an hour and make a connection. So Atlanta Cares really is a way that we connect people with community.

NELLIS: Search by your special interest or by location.

HEYNS: You can also enter your zip code and pull up projects that are right in your local area.

TRACY HOOVER, MANAGING DIRECTOR, HANDS ON ATLANTA: More and more folks are able to use the Web. And so, at a glance, I can find out what projects are available, what service opportunities are available, and everything is very much in real time. I can find out today what's available for me today.

NELLIS: Thanks to the Worldwide Web, it's easy to lend a helping hand, to click your mouse and make a difference around the world or in your own backyard.

Kathy Nellis, CNN.

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JORDAN: Atlanta Cares is part of a broad network called City Cares, which has affiliates in 27 U.S. cities and nine cities in the United Kingdom. It's goal: to encourage and channel the volunteer spirit. For more information, head to our classroom guide.

ANNOUNCER: Teachers, make the most of CNN NEWSROOM with our free daily classroom guide to the program. There you'll find a rundown of each day's show so you choose just the program segments that fit your lesson plan. Plus, there are discussion questions and activities, and the guide highlights key people, places and news terms. Each day, find hot links to other online resources and previews of upcoming desk segments. It's all at this Web address, where you can also sign up to have the guide automatically e-mailed directly to you each day. It's easy, it's free, it's your curriculum connection to the news. After all, the news never stops, and neither does learning.

You're watching CNN NEWSROOM, seen in schools around the world, because learning never stops, and neither does the news.

WALCOTT: In "Worldview" today, we're all over the map. We'll stop off in Africa, Australia and North America. In the "land down under," a bright spot on the road to the Olympics, and we do mean bright It's a trail-blazing idea. Then turning over a new leaf for Uganda with books. For many of you, classes are winding down and exams are nearing an end. If you don't have to turn your books back in to school, you might get a new idea of what to do with them.

TOM HAYNES, CO-HOST: A Ugandan college student studying in the United States has come up with a unique way to help his countrymen back home. Uganda is a country experimenting with democracy after years of civil war and rule by the ruthless dictator Idi Amin. Uganda is home to about 25 million people, about 40 percent of which can't even read or write.

But as CNN's Don Knapp reports, one young man has an idea he hopes can help change that. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DON KNAPP, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For Ugandan Ronald Musoke, it was like finding gold right there in the waste baskets of the community college in Marin County, California: used textbooks that may have sold for as much as a $100 new thrown into the trash after newer editions wiped out their resale value at the bookstore.

RONALD MUSOKE, BOOK COLLECTOR: So I thought that why can't I use these textbooks to send them back to Uganda. I've seen that many books been dropped in the street.

KNAPP: There were never enough books in Musoke's Uganda school.

MUSOKE: So you could imagine how 150 students using five books.

KNAPP: The 23-year-old student is a civil war survivor who lost his parents and 10 other family members to AIDS. Now he hopes to battle AIDS with books by raising the education level in Uganda. His main focus: women. He would use the books to pay for their tuition.

MUSOKE: They would come and get an education. It would be like an exchange.

KNAPP (on camera): So you see the books as a kind of currency.

MUSOKE: Exactly. To me it is. No doubt about it.

KNAPP: So it isn't just the content of the book, but it's the value of the book.

MUSOKE: OK.

KNAPP (voice-over): Instead of waste baskets, books now find their way to collection bins, 4,000 books so far. A corporate sponsor will pay part of the freight, but students do the heavy work of sorting and packing them.

RONI LAPINS, STUDENT: I'm really happy to be here and to be doing it. And I love to sort and organize so this is like -- this is perfect for me.

SCHWEDLER: It makes me feel good to know that I'm helping in the littlest way possible to make other people's lives a little bit better.

KNAPP: Here in one of the wealthiest counties in the United States, California students make a connection with a struggling African nation.

DAVID HALUSIC, STUDENT: It wasn't so detached after meeting him. It was something very immediate for me.

KNAPP: Musoke is teaching fellow students here new lessons in international relations with the books they used to throw away.

Don Knapp, CNN, Kentfield, California.

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JORDAN: Australia is getting set to host the 2000 summer Olympics this September in Sydney. Traditionally, the Olympic torch relay kicks off the celebrations, and this year is no exception. Starting this month, more than 10,000 Australians will carry it through more than 1,000 towns across the country. The 27,000 kilometer route -- about 17,000 miles -- is the longest in Olympic history. And this year's relay will make history in another way. For the first time, the torch will be going underwater through the Great Barrier Reef.

Sachi Koto reports.

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SACHI KOTO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): With each new Olympic celebration, host cities try to outdo past games with bigger and more spectacular shows and entertainers. Sydney is keeping up the tradition by staging the first Olympic torch relay partially underwater through the Great Barrier Reef.

It sounds unbelievable, but how can you keep the flame from being snuffed out underwater? As you see demonstrated here, pyrotechnology has developed what they call a "fierce flame" -- too powerful to be put out even by water.

RON HANCOCK, TORCH DESIGNER: To make the flare burn underwater, you just produce a gas bubble above the burning front and it shouldn't go out unless you get down too deep. It's really producing gas to prevent the pressure -- the whole flame from collapsing.

KOTO: A local scuba-diving marine biologist practicing here will have the honor and challenge of carrying the torch. Burning at 2000 degrees, the underwater leg of the relay will take about three or four minutes to complete among the fishes and reefs. Organizers hope the June 27 underwater relay will highlight the Queensland Great Barrier Reef, a popular tourist attraction.

Sachi Koto, CNN.

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JORDAN: Tonight we wrap up our look at Hispanic heritage in the United States: "Viviendo en America," or "Living in America." While Hollywood has largely ignored Latinos, Madison Avenue has embraced them. Why is that? The reason could be that Latinos represent an expanding market. As we've noted, Hispanics will soon become the largest minority group in the U.S., a group with tremendous buying power $348 billion to be exact. That's a lot of money, and a number of American businesses are paying that a lot of attention.

Joel Hochmuth explains.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) JOEL HOCHMUTH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Hispanic population in the United States is booming. In just the past 10 years, their numbers have jumped 35 percent to more than 30 million. The advertising world sees dollar signs.

DOLORES KUNDA, ADVERTISING EXECUTIVE: Now you're getting phone calls, you know, how do we get in on this? How do we, you know, reach the Hispanic community? How do we talk to the Hispanic consumer? I mean, just the fact that I'm sitting here talking to you all about the Hispanic community is a fascinating thing and it's something that never would have happened two years ago.

HOCHMUTH: Few people understand the Hispanic market as well as Dolores Kunda. She's director of Lapis, the Hispanic arm of advertising giant Leo Burnett in Chicago.

KUNDA: Are those two 15-second spots that we're going to present? Those are new right?

HOCHMUTH: Her company develops Spanish-language ad campaigns for some of the biggest names in American business, including Coca Cola, Kellogg's, Oldsmobile and Disney World.

KUNDA: As a marketing person, I say, OK, where can I get my other consumer? Where can I grow my business? How can I, you know, create more profitability for my company? And the place to do that is in the ethnic markets

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Hey Sammy, how many homers do you have so far?

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HOCHMUTH: The buying power of the Hispanic market is nothing new to some companies. McDonald's started advertising in Spanish nearly 30 years ago.

KUNDA: Primarily, those companies are ones that have direct contact with the consumers, so they see what's going on in the market place. McDonald's is one of them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, MCDONALD'S COMMERCIAL)

ANNOUNCER: Alguien dijo McDonald's?

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HOCHMUTH: Proctor & Gamble is another.

KUNDA: Proctor, with the kind of products that they sell to the marketplace, which are primarily packaged goods directed to families, they see what's going on in the community and they see what's happening in terms of the demographics. And so they understand that in order to stay on the cutting edge of what's happening in American society, you've got to pay attention to the Hispanic consumer.

HOCHMUTH: Latino teenagers may well become an especially lucrative market. Nearly four and a half million strong now, by the year 2020 their projected to number more than seven million.

KUNDA: If I'm marketing products to a teen consumer and I'm not looking at the Latino teen, then I'm going to be missing out on a huge proportion of the teen marketplace.

HOCHMUTH: Her assistants hit the streets around Chicago and the country to find out what makes Latino teens tick.

KUNDA: Where did, you know, these baggy pants that kids are wearing now and the turned-around baseball caps -- and where did all that start? It started in Manhattan. It started in Manhattan among the ethnic youth, you know, the Hispanics, the Latinos, the African Americans, the Asians who've sort of come together and have rubbed up against one another and, you know, have started these trends.

To me, the most significant find was how strong the kids felt about being Latinos and how prideful they were. I mean, they were very proud of being Latinos in the United States.

HOCHMUTH: That research goes into commercials like this one for Coca Cola. There's an underlying theme of family and respect, two strong Latino traits.

KUNDA: You're trying to get them emotionally involved with the product. For the Latino teen, touching them emotionally, in a lot of instances, means touching their Latino roots: Lack of hesitation on the part of the kid, the look that the kid gave the grandfather when he handed the Coke, the look that the grandfather gives the kid when he takes the Coke all signals to a Hispanic person that this is a truly Hispanic commercial, even though there's no words in it. You have to do it with some kind of finesse because I think it can get very stereotypical, very fast.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am going to walk you through the visuals first, and then I'm going to walk you through the copy.

HOCHMUTH: Kunda relies heavily on her own Hispanic instincts. Her heritage is partly Puerto Rican. Still, she says there are certain universal themes. For instance, this ad campaign for Sprite revolves around a fortune teller, someone Kunda says many Hispanics find familiar.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We open up inside a psychic booth. The psychic gets up and turns around and he goes to where he keeps his lucky charms. When he goes towards the lucky charm box, he's run out of them. So of course the psychic gets desperate because he's got nothing to give the kid, but he's like, hey, I have this Sprite here. Right as he is stepping out of the booth, he gets struck by lightning. We see the "kablooie," boom. And at the end, he's all burnt to a crisp, but he survived and he is refreshing his thirst with Sprite.

KUNDA: I think a lot of the teen advertising is driven by humor, by wit, by a certain sense of irreverence. I think, in a lot of ways, teens are very similar. And I think that the advertising that we try and do has not only a teen insight, but also has a Hispanic insight, which is tough. It's tough to do.

HOCHMUTH: Commercials like these still air almost exclusively on Spanish-language TV stations and networks. Kunda predicts eventually there will be more and more commercials for Hispanic audiences in English on mainstream television. In any event, it seems Latin-themed commercials are here to stay.

(on camera): All this talk about the Hispanic market place, do you see yourself as serving Latinos or exploiting them?

KUNDA: That's a good question. I think that, from our perspective, we obviously tend to think that we're serving the population rather than exploiting the population.

People come from Latin American countries because they want a better life in the United States. So marketing and advertising helps you to understand what those products are, what those products do, and then ultimately help you to get part of that American dream.

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WALCOTT: As we wrap up "Viviendo en America," we want to wish you a happy Cinco de Mayo.

JORDAN: That's right, it marks the day Mexican troops defeated a French army back in 1862. While it is a big day for many Mexican- Americans, it's become a day to celebrate for people of all races, too.

WALCOTT: And speaking of celebrations, we sent our very own Tom Haynes to a party right here in Atlanta.

JORDAN: Yes, we sent Tom to the prom. But not just any old prom: It was the Starlight Children's Foundation prom for kids with disabilities or chronic illness.

WALCOTT: And in his upcoming report, Tom tells us the focus of this night and all about having a good time.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If you were to go to a high school prom, no one would, more than likely, be like you and you would have to, like, to find your friends or just hang out to the side. Here you can go to people and dance and so forth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JORDAN: Look for Tom's prom night extravaganza coming up May 12 right here on NEWSROOM. And we're especially looking forward to his prom picture.

(LAUGHTER) WALCOTT: And that wraps it up for us here today. Have a great weekend.

JORDAN: We'll see you. Bye.

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